


beige walls and pea green couches

by moonrocks



Category: Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Can't Y'all Just Say You Care About Each Other And Stop Arguing, Drunkenness, Emotional Constipation, M/M, Miscommunication, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 14:36:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20472662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonrocks/pseuds/moonrocks
Summary: Bill and Holden deal with the aftermath.Alternatively, Bill needs a place to stay and a very drunk Holden Ford offers up his couch.





	beige walls and pea green couches

**Author's Note:**

> This connects somewhat to [weak hearts and blank spots](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20354458), so read that one and then come read this one. Let's just say this exists in a universe where Bill isn't a dick about Holden's panic attacks.

Bill comes home to an empty house.

The moment he steps inside, a weight falls over him, sombre and oppressive like the house itself is trying to push him back out. As his eyes meet the lumpy sofa in the middle of the sitting room, he almost wants to laugh. It sits there, an ugly pea green colour, seams like downturned eyes, and stares back at him, collecting dust.

Bill sets his bag down by the door.

The first place he goes is the bedroom. He sits down on the mattress and the springs sigh underneath his weight like they might snap. Everything feels fragile in here when it never did before. Even the air feels like it could break, like Bill could reach out and it would shatter in his hands, cutting through his palms and his fingers.

Nancy stripped the mattress of its linens, so it looks as bare and broken as the rest of the house, the bedframe left behind in an unwieldy metaphor for what must be left of their marriage. Bill tries not to look at the shirts hanging in only one side of the closet or the sunbleached outline that the wardrobe left on the carpet, instead he stares at the delicate pink flowers interwoven across the ugly sateen mattress cover. He sighs, puts his head in his hands, and his chest feels nothing but hollow, like the gutted cupboards in the kitchen or the nails in the walls where family photos used to hang.

It feels like hours or maybe days before Bill finally stands again. Every footstep sounds deafeningly loud as he wanders through the rest of the house, floorboards creaking behind him. The bathroom is empty besides the fixtures, the remnants of a bar of lavender soap crusting the side of the sink and Brian’s bath toys missing from the tub.

Brian’s room is just as stripped away. The walls are blank—posters, school report cards, and childhood drawings taken down—and the bookshelves that were once stuffed with every _Sesame Street_, _Dr. Seuss_, and _Corduroy Bear_ book Bill could find are also gone, the race cars and well-worn stuffed dog missing from their usual place on the windowsill. As Bill eyes traces the spots where they once were, he feels the hole in his chest swell and swallow him. He bites down on the inside of his lip to stop tears from pricking his eyes and backs out of the room, quietly closing the door behind him like he would after coming home late and kissing Brian goodnight.

As expected, his office has been left relatively untouched in comparison to the other rooms. Nancy took the upholstered chair from the corner and the lamp that stood beside it—both items Bill recalls buying from the same furniture store downtown before they moved in—along with his desk and the telephone. Most of his things have been relegated to a corner beside his row of metal cabinets, boxes of files haphazardly stacked on top of one another and loose manila folders laid out the carpet. Bill stoops down to right some of the papers when the corner of a crime scene photograph peaks out from a pile of transcribed interviews; a tease of a leg, freckled with dirt, grey and stiff from rigor mortis. Bill feels vomit stir in his stomach as he imagines Brian finding these in his desk drawer, and what else he must have seen when he tied that boy to that cross.

Bill flexes and unflexes his fist, then reaches over to tear the photographs in half. He tosses them in the bin.

When he emerges from the room, his eyes are met with that ugly green sofa yet again and he knows he won’t be able to stay here and stomach the emptiness, let alone sleep when the silence is so loud. Bill retreats to the bedroom to change out of his suit, if only to rid himself of the airport stink lingering on his clothes, then grabs his bag and heads out the door, unable to look back.

For a while, Bill just drives, not knowing what to do or where to go, radio blasting to drown out his thoughts and keep himself from going over the edge.

As the sun dips lower in the sky and the clouds turn cotton candy pink, Bill stops at a diner and orders a black coffee to satiate his growling stomach despite his lack of appetite.

The waitress is young, no older than nineteen, and her rouge lips upturn in a smile as she takes down his order, her manicured hand gripping a heart-shaped pad of notebook paper. It begins to rain, and Bill listens to the pitter-patter as it knocks against the windows like pebbles. He tries to figure out his next move, but his mind is racing and every thread seems to lead to the same conclusion; a failed marriage and a failed fatherhood.

The waitress returns to refill his cup several times and Bill watches as the diner clears out customer by customer. Finally, as the cat clock hanging above his table nears twelve, Bill asks, “Can I use your phone?”

“We have pay phones just outside,” the waitress says, her falsified cheeriness slipping away the closer the diner gets to closing.

Bill watches the street outside, slick and shiny with water as the downpour refuses to let up. “Right.”

Bill throws a couple bills onto the table, takes one last sip of coffee, then searches around in his pockets for change, preparing to pull his jacket up over his head.

The rain is deafening as Bill presses the receiver to his ear and listens to the monotonous dial tone drone on and on, urging him to make up his mind and think of a number to call before it times out. Bill wonders how he can reach Nancy, if he should try her sister or a few of her friends in the neighbourhood to see if they’ve heard anything from her, but the last thing Bill wants is to muddy the waters more by calling at an ungodly hour and begging for forgiveness. He has some dignity left, if not much.

Bill reaches into his jacket and takes out a small, black leather bound address book and flips to a number scrawled down in smudged blue ink that has yet to fade. Bill sighs, wondering what the hell he’s doing as he dials the number on the grimy key pad.

The phone rings, once then twice. Holden picks up on the third ring.

“Hello? Holden Ford speaking.”

Bill snorts. “You answer your phone with your full name?”

A long pause. For a minute Bill thinks Holden has hung up on him, but then he says, “Bill? Is that you?”

“For better or worse.”

He hears Holden sigh on the other end. “Is something wrong? Where are you? Why is it so loud?”

A taxi cab passes through the parking lot, tires sloshing through a puddle.

“Doesn’t matter,” Bill says, covering one ear with his hand and crowding further into the booth. “Can I meet you somewhere. For a drink or something?”

Bills knows this might push the boundaries of co-worker coda, but he’s not sure he could stand sitting at a bar alone, wallowing in his own self-pity and knocking back Old Fashioneds with the rest of the drunks.

“A drink? Uh, maybe,” Holden says and Bill can hear him clearer now. He sounds more animated than usual, his vowel sounds elongated and slurred. “Maybe, maybe not.”

Then Bill realizes. “Holden, are you drunk?”

“What? No, of course not.” Holden makes an unconvincing _psh_ sound that crackles through the receiver.

“Holden,” Bill says with mock sternness.

“Okay, yes,” comes his response, comically deadpan. “I had a couple drinks.”

“Well, if you have alcohol over there, I’m coming over.”

“You know where I live, so I guess I can’t stop you,” Holden says sarcastically.

They both hang up.

Bill drives to Holden’s apartment complex, retracing his steps from when he dropped Holden off from the airport after his stint in Vacaville. He parks and waits inside, swallowing his pride as he presses the intercom button until the doors buzz and unlock like a jail cell in a penitentiary. He finds his way to the fifth floor and knocks on apartment number 520. On the fifth knock, the door swings open and Holden is standing there, looking slightly bewildered, glass of whiskey clutched in his hand. He says nothing at first, just eyes Bill and the state he must be in; jacket rain soaked, his crew cut matted down against his skull, bags settling in deep beneath his eyes.

“Can I come in?” Bill asks.

Holden somewhat clumsily shuffles out of the way and waves Bill inside. “By all means,” he says, then returns to his drink.

Bill steps inside, but only as far as the doormat while water runs off the hem of his coat onto the floor. He can hear music coming from the living room, something upbeat and synthy that probably gets played on college radio.

“Is this what you usually do past midnight on a Tuesday?” Bill asks.

“You told me to take a victory lap.” Holden swirls the whiskey around in his crystalline glass for effect, but he looks less than enthusiastic as he stares down into the liquid. It appears muddy in the dull glow of the hallway. “Just doing what you told me, Bill.”

He downs the rest, then disappears into the kitchen. “Do you want a drink?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer.

“Need is the better word for it,” Bill quips, but the joke comes out sounding all wrong, too forced.

Nonetheless, Bill hears hiccupy laughter and the sound of condiment jars rattling against each other as Holden tugs the refrigerator door open. Bill takes off his sopping wet coat and hangs it on the nearest hook, sliding the doormat underneath to catch the dripping water.

He follows Holden into the kitchen to where his normally astute and well put together partner is swaying drunkenly on his feet, leaning against the side of the fridge. This must be the first time Holden has been home in weeks because the shelves are empty aside from a few food staples and a six-pack of beer, two of which are already gone.

“I have beer, white wine,” Holden says, rummaging around, “and whiskey somewhere on the counter.”

Bill reaches over and picks up the half empty bottle. The whiskey sloshes around inside.

Holden brightens, but there’s something artificial about it. “Good, you found it.”

He reaches over to slide his glass across the counter for Bill to refill, then grabs another from the cupboard above the sink. Bill glances down as he’s pouring and sees a light blue dress shirt soaking in an inch of soapy water, a reddish stain fading on the cuff.

They retreat to the living room. Holden’s apartment is tidy and compact in a way that a hospital room is tidy and compact; blank beige walls, blinds drawn over the windows, barely worn-in furniture sparsely arranged around the space. The room is devoid of any definitive personality. Maybe its lack thereof has Holden written all over it.

Bill has never been here before. He’s had no reason to be. Despite the demands of the job—sharing motel rooms, sharing an office, sharing space while on the road for weeks at a time—their private lives have always been somewhat concealed by the pretence of a work relationship.

Holden motions towards the couch for Bill to take a seat, and Bill thinks about the time he invited Holden and Debbie over for dinner. He remembers how Holden had sat on the floor beside Brian and tipped over his cabin made of Lincoln Logs, how they had talked over glasses of whiskey, almost like friends.

But this feels different.

Something between them has shifted since Vacaville, since Atlanta, however unspoken it may be. Situations have changed. Bill is sitting in an unfamiliar living room, close to 1 AM on a Tuesday, and Holden is wasted, wavering on his heels as he sets his glass on top of the stereo and stoops down to shuffle around some cassette tapes. The TV is on mute and turned to late night reruns of _Happy Days. _

Aside from his drunkenness, Holden acts no different here than he does at work. Even at this hour, he’s wearing his suit pants and pristine undershirt, his belt not loosened even an inch since he got back from the airport. Holden looks more out of place in his poorly decorated apartment than he does in the basement of Quantico, swallowed by drab and yellow lighting, case files laid out on his desk and a muddy cup of coffee in his hand. Bill idly wonders if Holden ever lets go, if his thoughts ever slow to a manageable pace, if he ever forgets or even knows how to. Even with a drink in his hand, his back is pin straight.

Holden turns to Bill after sliding another tape into the stereo and jamming the play button with his thumb. He adjusts the volume and Blondie’s _Dreaming_ pours through the speakers, the poppy beat juxtaposing the otherwise still and borderline tense atmosphere. Bill fiddles with the brassy wedding ring on his finger and wonders why he thought this was a better idea than booking a hotel.

“What are you doing here, Bill?” Holden asks.

Bill inhales. If he knew Holden was going to be so straightforward, he would’ve come up with a better excuse.

“Nancy and I had an argument,” he says, keeping his tone as flat and even as possible despite his chest threatening to sink in on itself as he says those six words, words that should be simple but are laid out thick with guilt.

Holden frowns. He gets to his feet, grabbing his drink, and leans up against the far wall. The coffee table separates the space between them, and that separation only adds to the uncertainty hanging in the moment before Holden meets his eyes. Bill worries that Holden, with his uncomfortable ability to pull people apart and examine their pieces, can tell that something more is going on. On the other hand, Bill knows Holden can be equally as oblivious towards issues that extend beyond a killer propped up in front of a tape machine, always too caught up in his own point of view to consider anything happening outside of his own head.

“That bad, huh?” Holden says. “I worry for your social life if I’m the first person you’ve come to.”

Bill, relieved that Holden is saving his poking and prodding for another time, smirks at that. “Most of my friends have kids, Holden. It’s a school night.”

“Well, lucky for you I have no social life myself.” Holden presses his drink against his increasingly alcohol reddened face. “The most interaction I’ve had outside of co-workers in the past three months was Charles Manson sticking his tongue out at me.”

Holden makes a sour face and Bill laughs, some of the stress easing off his shoulders as he watches an increasingly unsober Holden Ford smile down into his whiskey.

“What about Debbie?” Bill asks.

Holden face straightens and Bill immediately regrets bringing it up, inferring what must be coming next.

“She ended things,” Holden says without looking up. “It wasn’t working out.”

“Oh.” Bill shifts on the couch, takes another sip of his drink, and tries not to think about Nancy. The metallic pang of whiskey tastes bitter on his tongue, more bitter than usual. “How come?”

Holden lets out a sort of sigh and a sort of laugh. “Do you really wanna hear me talk about my relationship problems or are you just faking an interest because I’m giving you free booze?”

“Can’t it be both?”

“No, you have to pick one.”

Bill hides his smirk as he says, “So, when did this happen?” and Holden watches him closely for a moment, a pause hanging between them as his eyes trace his face, looking for dilated pupils, sweat on the forehead, a quirk of the mouth or a twitch of the eyebrows, before he throws up his hands in defeat.

“I can’t tell,” Holden says with a huff, “but I have a pretty good guess.”

Bill shakes his head. “Thought you were the Boy Wonder of the Behavioural Science Unit. What am I gonna tell Ted?”

They laugh and it feels like a much needed release. A moment passes and Holden returns to Bill’s original question.

“We broke up a few months ago,” he says.

Bill looks up at him in disbelief. “A few months ago? Why didn’t you say anything until now?”

“I wasn’t drunk.” Holden takes another sip of whiskey to illustrate his point. “And you didn’t ask.”

“Besides that.”

“I had a lot on my plate.” Holden shrugs. “We were in the middle of the investigation with OPR.”

Bill narrows his eyes at him as he sets the timeline straight in his head. “So this was before you went to visit Kemper?”

Holden, maybe realizing he said more than he should have, merely nods.

“So, what, you were feeling lonely?” Bill asks. Part of him is joking, but another part of him is still furious that Holden walked out on the inquiry and ran off to California into the arms of one of their subjects, to put it lightly. “Is that why you disappeared?”

Holden sighs sharply through his nose. “Bill, no.”

“If you were feeling that way, why in God’s name would you go to Ed fucking Kemper?”

“I could ask you the same question,” Holden bites back. “This fight with Nancy. Why would you come to me?”

“Last time I checked you weren’t a convicted serial killer.” Bill rubs at his face and sighs. “Besides, my family life is none of your fucking business, Holden.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I don’t know,” Bill says. “You tell me.”

As Holden stares him down, something shifts over his face and that look appears in his eyes, the one he gets in the middle of an interview when questions start rolling off his tongue. Bill can hear the cogs turn in his head.

“You called me at twelve in the morning, several hours after you would have gotten home from the airport,” Holden begins. It seems like the alcohol has done nothing to dull his mind, only slur his speech, and Bill already regrets opening up this door for him. “I could hear heavy rainfall in the background of the call, as well as the sound of cars passing by, so you must have been calling from a payphone close to the road. But why not call from home? And why bring the suitcase you had in Atlanta here?”

Bill grinds his molars together. “Holden,” he warns, but Holden ignores him.

“At first I thought maybe Nancy refused to let you into the house, but you changed your clothes, so you must have been able to use the phone. But after you called me, I tried calling your house to see if Nancy was okay.” Holden pauses, swallows, looks at Bill. “It said the number had been disconnected, Bill. When I answered the door you looked more upset than you would be after some meaningless argument, so why are you really here?”

Bill feels like Holden has stripped off his skin and laid his bones bare. Anger swells in his chest like a balloon, pressing through the spaces between his ribcage, but it deflates into a dull ache when he sees the look in Holden’s eyes has been replaced with worry, maybe even remorse.

Bill almost wants to laugh, or maybe he wants to cry, but he does neither, only forces down the lump growing in his throat and reaches into his pocket. “I need a cigarette.”

Holden just blinks at him. Bill gets to his feet, fishing his lighter out, and finds his way outside through the door off the kitchen. He lights up and takes a long and deliberate drag of his cigarette.

Thankfully, it’s stopped raining. Bill listens to the rhythmic _drip, drip, drip_ as water splatters onto the pavement as he thinks about the last time he saw Nancy, how she pinched her cigarette and sat facing away from him, smoke curling around the curls on her head, gaze fixed on the overgrown lawn.

Maybe if he were Holden he could’ve seen it coming. Maybe if he were Holden he could examine the aftermath—shirts hanging on his side of the closet, files collecting dust on the carpet, that sofa she never liked left behind—and figure out the underlying reasons why she took Brian and left. But Holden has never been good at fixing things. He only knows how to identify the pieces, see which jagged edges fit where.

After a minute, the door slides open and Holden joins him outside. He leans up against the railing beside Bill, not too close but not too far. His glass is empty but he clutches onto it still, twists it between his thumb and forefinger.

“That was out of line,” he says finally.

Bill sighs. “Are you apologizing?”

“Do you want me to?”

“What does it matter?”

A minute or two passes. Bill flicks ash off his cigarette and it drifts downwards the parking lot below like peppery snow.

“Sorry,” Holden says finally.

Whether he means it or not, Bill has no idea. “I’m sorry too.”

“For what?”

Bill shrugs, taking another puff of his cigarette. “For showing up at your doorstep at one in the fucking morning, then acting like you had no right to ask me what the fuck was going on.”

“You don’t need to tell me, alright?” Holden says like he doesn’t already know. “I get it.”

“Do you?”

Holden shifts at that. He turns away from Bill as if to conceal the wounds he was close to baring, sutures threatening to come undone. His gaze falls to the city beneath them, his eyelashes casting pointed shadows on his cheeks.

Even in its stillness, the city has weight. In the early AM, it keeps breathing, the concrete lungs of every drifter, every taxi driver and every streetwalker. Somewhere below a police car flashes blue, white, and red like a Bomb Pop, like fireworks on the Fourth of July, and nothing feels more drenched in Americana than a stretch of suburban houses punctured with the knife edge of violence. Bill is already tired of the heat and the summer of ‘81 is just beginning.

“Are we friends?” Holden asks suddenly and it swallows up the silence, settling into the empty space crooked and heavy. Bill turns to him and Holden pales. “Shit, I sound like Kemper.”

Bill snorts. “What are you talking about?”

“When I went to visit him, he asked me if we were friends.”

“Are you?”

“Of course not.”

“Are we?”

“Are we what?”

Bill smirks around his cigarette. “Friends.”

Holden sets his glass down between the bars of the railing and rests his chin in his left hand, fingers splayed out over one pinkish cheek. “Forget I asked that,” he mumbles. “I need to stop drinking.”

“Why are you drinking tonight, Holden?” Bill asks after a while. “No offense but sitting alone in my apartment with a bottle of whiskey listening to shitty pop records is not the way I celebrate closing a case.”

“Why would I celebrate?” Holden counters. “I feel like I fucked everything up.”

“What more could you have done?” Bill asks, thinking of Brian and the gummy blue sticky tack on his walls where his _Sesame Street_ posters used to be, the rubber ducks and fire trucks missing from the tub in the bathroom. “You did your job.”

“I don’t know, Bill.”

Holden looks tired and pale even after several weeks spent in the humid Atlantan sun. The guilt is beginning to seep through the cracks in his composure, staining his face like the pasta sauce on the dress shirt soaking in his sink. In different circumstances, Bill might feel sorry for him, but whatever Holden is going through seems almost superficial, shortsighted in comparison to everything else going on. He did his job in Atlanta, nothing more and nothing less.

Bill pinches his cigarette between his fingers until he feels the tobacco crunch. “Why does it even matter now?” he asks, annoyed that Holden always finds a way to press the issue, fishing around for answers Bill never has. “So what if it’s not clean cut? We caught the guy. They’ll convict him of the twenty-some odd murders, he’ll go to prison and we’ll go to the golf course. Job well done.”

Holden frowns, then his mouth goes slack as realization crosses his face. “Did you not hear?”

“Hear what?”

“Shit.”

Holden takes a step back from the railing, running a nervous hand through his hair. For a moment, Bill thinks Holden might have another panic attack, like the one he had in Atlanta, but Holden composes himself. He settles back against the railing beside Bill.

“Williams is only being indicted for the murders of the two adults, Jimmy Ray Payne and Nathaniel Carter,” Holden says somberly. “The rest of the investigations are now classified as inactive. Authorities are handing all cases over to local police.”

Bill feels his heart rise to his throat. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

“I wish I was.”

Bill sighs. He should have seen this coming—the city was desperate for it to go away—but it makes no difference in numbing his anger or his disappointment. He feels like a wound has been reopened just to sit there and fester without any hope of an ointment to soothe it.

“Bastards.” Bill throws his cigarette butt off the balcony onto the pavement below. “I need another drink.”

“What we both need is sleep,” Holden says. “Do you need a place to stay tonight?”

After a moment of hesitation, Bill nods.

Back inside, Bill sits on the couch, the last few seconds of the cassette tape fading out. He takes off his jacket, folds it, and places it neatly on the back of a chair, then takes off his shoes, his watch, and strips down to his undershirt and pants.

When Holden comes back, he’s wearing a different undershirt than before, one that’s not quite as white, and pyjama pants that hang loose on his hips. He’s carrying a folded stack of sheets in one hand and a knitted blanket in the other, spare pillow tucked underneath his arm. He dumps all of it beside Bill.

“Those sheets have a six hundred thread count,” Holden says, pointing down at them. “You’re welcome.”

Bill chuckles. “Why am I not surprised you know the exact thread count of your sheets.”

Holden shrugs. He turns on the lamp in the corner and goes to shut off the ceiling light, but his hand stills on the light switch. They share a look, but it feels burdened by something Bill can’t pinpoint.

Holden glances away. He shuts off the light and the room grows dim. “I’ll be down the hall if you need anything.”

He gets halfway across the room before Bill says, “Holden?”

Holden turns around. “Yeah?”

Bill forces the words out before he can lose the nerve. “Nancy left.” He’s startled by how matter-of-fact it sounds coming from his mouth, like he’s talking about someone else’s problems. “She took Brian and she left.”

Holden looks less surprised and more affirmed, like he knew all along, but he also looks no less apologetic. “I said you didn’t have to tell me, Bill.”

“Well, I’m telling you now.”

Holden takes a step towards him. “I’m here if you want to talk about it,” he says. "And if not now then maybe some other time."

It feels like a repeat of what happened in Atlanta, when Bill watched Holden have a panic attack on the floor of his hotel room, head in his hands and tears on his cheeks. He wonders if Holden feels like he did then—scared shitless and helpless to do anything—or if that side of their relationship means something entirely different to him, if it means anything at all. At that thought, whatever Bill meant to say—whether it was a thank you or a confession—dies unceremoniously in his throat.

“Goodnight, Holden,” Bill says and somehow he's sure those two words tell Holden all he needs to know.

Holden offers him a small smile. “Night, Bill.”

He disappears into his bedroom and softly shuts the door. Bill lays down.

Somehow sleep finds him.

**Author's Note:**

> make holden and bill sad + stick em in a room together + make them argue until they almost admit they care about each other = ???????? profit ???????
> 
> let me know what you thought!


End file.
